She suffered a slipped disc and the birth of twins and in neither case did she cry or cry out. This is because she knows that every minute will bring a diminution of the pain, so she sees no point in participating too much in the process. She would be concerned only if the pain did not decrease on a more or less steadily downward path — but it has never diverged from this steadily downward path.

However. However. However, the mental pain is different. She has never remembered, with any clarity, the pain she suffered between her legs or in her limbs - the memory of physical pain is so fleeting; thus women who bear multiple children - but the pain of lies, the pain of insults, of betrayals, abandonments and the like, these pains can come back to her, years or decades later, with incredible clarity. And they do, they do, they do! They lunge at her, with no shame about being so old; they have a permanent and exaggerated sense of their own importance. And she is now lying on the couch, dispassionately nursing her foot, while her mind is flooding, panicking about this new betrayal, which came to her today, on a postcard.

It was so small! How could something so small . . . A beautiful picture of Bucharest on one side, and just the most violent scrawlings on the other - the most reckless and slashing words! Only 22 words, but they ripped and shredded her and she knows that they will never leave her. Will they? God, this pain! She tries to map it, calculate its half-life: how long will these 22 words have power?

— Dave Eggers